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GIVE THE HENS PLENTY OF ROOM. 



There is a snare spread for beginners in the poultry business 

 which catches nearly all : it is to crowd the birds. The pros- 

 pective poultryman has a small flock and they have laid well. He 

 begins to reason like this: "I have kept 12 hens in this pen the 

 past year and they have netted me two dollars apiece. All I have 

 to do to increase my income is to increase the number of my birds. 

 If 12 hens have paid me 24, 50 hens will pay me $100." This 

 seems logical, and the prospective poultryman goes to work and 

 puts in 50 birds, only to find at the end of the year that the 50 

 birds have not paid him so well as the 12 did. They have laid no 

 more eggs, and sickness has been rife among them. More men 

 lose money and retire from the poultry business in disgust from 

 losses brought about by putting too many birds into one pen 

 than from any other cause. 



The farmer would not think of putting two cows in one stall. 

 He would not plant his potatoes in rows one foot apart. He 

 would not shut up his family in one room. Why should he not 

 display the same good sense in dealing with his fowls? Experi- 

 ence has shown that 10 square feet of floor space is about the 

 amount needed by each hen if she is to do her best. Where the 

 house is kept perfectly clean, and where the hens have a chance 

 to get out doors every pleasant day, they can get along with a 

 somewhat smaller space. But for the best results in egg pro- 

 ducing there must be plenty of room. The year I made the 

 phenomenal record with my White Wyandottes 214 eggs 

 apiece from October to October I knocked out the partitions 

 between two pens and gave the flock double room. 



DUST BATH. 



Provide your hens with a dust bath. They will spend many 

 happy hours wallowing in the warm earth and will keep them- 

 selves reasonably free from lice. But do not trust to the dust 

 bath entirely, for in the dead of winter the bath is often so cold 

 that the biddies will not use it, and then lice will get in their work. 

 Soil out of the garden, sifted through a common coal sieve, makes 

 the best material for a dust bath that I know anything about. 

 Next to this I rank coal ashes. The bath tub may be a sugar 

 barrel, sawed off about a foot from the bottom and set in a sunny 

 place, or one of those shallow square boxes that "Force" and 

 other cereal foods come in, which may generally be obtained of 

 the grocer for the asking. 



